Ukraine reports movement of Russian tanks, weapons

Rozdolne, Ukraine: Kiev says a massive convoy of tanks and heavy weapons from Russia was travelling towards a government-held town in restive east Ukraine on Wednesday.

A convoy of "up to 100" tanks, armoured vehicles and rocket launchers was seen travelling on a road toward Telmanove, a town about 80 kilometres south of rebel stronghold Donetsk and 20 kilometres from the Russian border, Ukraine's army said in a statement.

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On Wednesday, journalists travelling on the same road heading south to Telmanove said they saw traces of tank tracks and heard explosions.

Ukrainian military also said that a smaller group of vehicles had crossed the border from Russia about 110 kilometres east of Donetsk and travelled on to the rebel stronghold.

The convoy included "six Grad rocket launchers, eight covered Kamaz [trucks] and two Ural trucks with manpower," the statement said.

The accusations came as unidentified, heavily armed strangers with Russian accents have appeared in an eastern Ukrainian village, arousing residents' suspicions despite Moscow's denials that its troops have deliberately infiltrated the frontier.

Two witnesses in Kolosky said that the dozens of men, who arrived at the weekend and set up a road block, were not local and had military ration packs marked with Russian writing.

While they wore no insignia, their appearance or behaviour bore striking similarities to a group of Russian troops detained in Ukraine in the past few days, and to Russian forces that occupied Crimea earlier this year, the witnesses said.

The men had white arm-bands, the same identifying mark that was worn by 10 men captured a few kilometres away by Ukrainian forces and who, in video released on Tuesday, said they were Russian paratroopers.

Ukraine accuses Russia of sending weapons and soldiers to fight alongside pro-Moscow rebels in the country's east, a charge the Kremlin has denied throughout the five-month conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin played down the entry by his troops into Ukraine during talks on Tuesday with his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko in Belarus.

Mr Poroshenko and Mr Putin sat down for a one-on-one meet in Minsk after marathon talks, which apparently failed to make a major breakthrough towards ending the fighting.

Mr Poroshenko said there were "some results", but there seemed to be no significant compromises to help end the clashes.

Mr Putin said he would "do everything" to help a future peace process, but shrugged off Kiev's claims it had captured the 10 Russian troops on its territory, with military sources in Moscow earlier saying they crossed over "by accident".

Kolosky is about seven kilometres from Dzerkalniy, a settlement where Ukrainian officials said they had detained the Russian troops featured in the video footage.

One of the men said in video footage released by Ukraine's security services that they had been instructed to put on white arm-bands.

The two witnesses who spoke to Reuters said the armed men did not have any insignia on their uniforms or vehicles that would explicitly identify them as Russian troops, but they said there were more subtle signs.

"The people at the new checkpoint, they were polite military men wearing green. Definitely not Ukrainian. They're definitely not from around here," he said.

"Polite green men" was the tongue-in-cheek term coined by many Russians to describe Russian soldiers, with identifying insignia removed, who arrived in Ukraine's Crimea region before Moscow annexed it in March.

Another witness, Alexei, who was in Kolosky on Monday, said that the armed men, when asked who they were, told residents only that they had come "to protect them".

That was an answer given by Russian military officers after they first seized state buildings in Crimea.